Slug off!

The Hispi cabbage seedlings that dad gave me a few weeks back are now ready for planting out at the allotment. We always do well with our cabbages (I guess they like clay soil) but slugs are a perennial problem. Cue: new line of defence:

Two slug and snail traps from Home Bargains! The idea is you fill the trap with beer or yeast mixed with water and bury the trap so that the slugs crawl in through the opening in the side (and hopefully don't crawl out again). We decided to go with the yeast and water mix as per the recipe on the slugoff website (I'm not joking!). We made cardboard collars for the cabbages and planted out the 6 biggest ones, keeping 5 in reserve:

Only 6 you might say? Well they all tend to mature at the same time, and there really is only so much cabbage a family of three can eat! As per usual we also netted the plants to provide shade, shelter and to keep the cabbage white butterflies at bay:

In other news we have sown some courgettes and squashes:

Most of the squash seeds are old so I thought we would try a bit of pot luck. Two seeds per pot were sown and if any germinate we will probably select 3 or 4 plants to grow on.